tenant-General Sir
Samuel Auchmuty, Commander-in-Chief; and Commodore Broughton. While
here, the British learned that Marshal Daendels, the Dutch
Governor-General, had been recalled, and that General Janssens, with a
large body of troops from France, had landed and taken over the command
in Java.

Marshal Daendels had been the Governor-General when the Colony was taken
over by the Crown of Holland from the Dutch East India Company. He has
left the mark of his influence upon the Colony to this day, and many of
the public works that remain as evidence of the pioneer days were due to
his force of character and initiative. Some of his methods may not
commend themselves to us in these more humane and enlightened days, any
more than they were approved by his great English successor, Sir
Stamford Raffles, such, for instance, as his construction of the
post-road from Anjer Head to Banjoewangi, a distance of over 700 miles,
at the cost of from twelve to twenty thousand lives; but it is not
always easy to estimate at a distance of a hundred years the peculiar
difficulties and conditions under which European Governors administered
an oriental Colony. If, at times, he exceeded his instructions, as
British Governors also had to do before they came under the thralldom
of a Colonial Department at the end of a telegraph cable, we can forgive
much in a man who accomplished so much.

Sir Stamford Raffles is careful to explain in the preface of his
"History of Java" that as "in the many severe strictures passed upon the
Dutch Administration in Java, some of the observations may, for want of
a careful restriction in the words employed, appear to extend to the
Dutch nation and character generally, I think it proper explicitly to
declare that such observations are intended exclusively to apply to the
Colonial Government and its officers. The orders of the Dutch Government
in Holland to the authorities at Batavia, as far as my information
extends, breathe a spirit of liberality and benevolence; and I have
reason to believe that the tyranny and rapacity of its Colonial officers
created no less indignation in Holland than in other countries of
Europe."

On June 11, the British armada set out on the final stage of its
journey. We can imagine the imposing show it made as it lay in the
roadstead of Malacca, now shorn of its ancient importance and long since
superseded as the foremost shipping port in the Far East.

The squadron consisted of f